


A Childhood They Deserve

by Classpectanon



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Canon Compliant, Domestic Fluff, F/F, F/M, Fluff, Gen, M/M, Past Character Death, Pesterlog(s) (Homestuck), Post-Canon, Raising two kids as three parents is hard, Slice of Life, The Homestuck Epilogues, but they're trying, epilogue compliant
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-26
Updated: 2019-10-27
Packaged: 2020-02-04 13:36:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 6,843
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18605602
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Classpectanon/pseuds/Classpectanon
Summary: The solution was pretty obvious in hindsight. A little more elbow grease and a couple of additions to the old place, and now, there was room for all five of them, and that's how it went. The nearest school was thirty minutes by car, as opposed to the previous 10 minutes by bus for Harry Anderson, but he adjusted. After a week of complaining.Three gods in their forties, without a wrinkle or blemish or any indication that they were older than 32, and their two kids. As Roxy said, they had a whole lifetime of mistakes ahead of them. Better go make some, while they still had the time.But John knew there was more than that. He had to make happy memories, too.So he figured he better get to work on that category while he's here.-----Do you feel personally victimized by the open-ended nature of the Candy epilogue? Let me try to fix your pain.





	1. Chapter 1

There.

Spic and span. Away from bad memories, but ready to fill with new ones.

Fixing up the old place was the easy part, all the way in the Salamander Village. It was a little bit of elbow grease and some help from the nearby salamanders. Over the years, Casey's spawn had grown to treat the place with a degree of reverence, almost like some kind of shrine, and they were glad to help when John and Jake arrived to finally clean up.

Things were looking bleak for Jane, somehow. With every passing day, they lost ground, a factory destroyed, despite her overwhelming political power over every echelon of the planet. The rebellion was moving swimmingly, like a well-oiled machine. What Jane lost, they gained, drones restructured into weapons, ships scrapped, like a zombie horde ever growing, except it was a zombie horde that John was... Slightly in support of? Like he had thought earlier, squeezing a water balloon and expecting it not to burst in your face. Jane no longer had the support of any gods besides herself, and even the reticence of Karkat to get people involved after... Um. After.

John doesn't like to linger on Dave for too long. He's not a praying man, but he keeps a replica of Dave's shades on his nightstand, just in case it helps.

Wherever he is, Dreambubble or oblivion. 

There are casualties in wartime. 

It took a couple of months for John to get past that.

The Harry Anderson situation was complicated for a while, too. Flitting back and forth between Salamander Village to take care of Tavros and then to the Carapace Kingdom where Roxy lived to visit Harry Anderson was a decent transit even if John could fly real fast. He didn't have a day job that he had to be at, and neither did Jake or Roxy, but they still had schedules that needed to be matched.

The solution was pretty obvious in hindsight. A little more elbow grease and a couple of additions to the old place, and now, there was room for all five of them, and that's how it went. The nearest school was thirty minutes by car, as opposed to the previous 10 minutes by bus for Harry Anderson, but he adjusted. After a week of complaining. Three gods in their forties, without a wrinkle or blemish or any indication that they were older than 32, and their two kids. Spring brought with it a steadily decreasing peal of gunfire in the distance, something already limited from the Salamander Village's distance from any active warfronts. It was slowly dragging to an end. 

And still, life went on. Meals were cooked and consumed. Tests were flunked. Tavros was flirted with by other students, which was apparently something uncomfortable to him for a number of reasons, and something he came to John for advice for often, despite the fact that John had  _no_ idea what he was doing either. John had... Moved on(?) from Roxy, but he still wasn't sure if he was ready to date again. And he didn't know about Roxy or Jake either. Suffice to say, they had all been through some shit, but like she had said, they had a whole _lifetime_ of mistakes ahead of them.

Better go make some, while they still had the time. But John knew there was more than that. He had to make happy memories, too.

So he figured he better get to work on that category while he's here.

* * *

The sunny spring day wasn't anything special. The sun was out, the rattle of cannons and railguns in the distance was at a minimum buzz. Birds flew by with a frenetic flapping of wings, bees and butterflies and other pollinators twirling around Jake's little garden that he had started. It wasn't anything big or fancy, just one of those little wooden fence thingies that vines could hang off of, and dirt for the flowers and other plants, and he had even started tending to a little sapling a month ago. His flowers and blooms decorated the house from top to bottom, replacing a pretty voluminous portion of all but a few of the harlequins. Already, it was starting to feel like Jade's place again, oh no, there John went with his wild train of thought again.

It took him a minute to wrestle back control of it. It wasn't like Jade was in trouble, she just had her grief to sort out. And John understood that. Dave and John were pretty tight, but not "get married" tight, the way she and Dave were. The last time they had seen each other was two months ago, where Jade visited for an hour rather abruptly during dinner. Words were exchanged only in the barest sense, as Jade fished a frozen dinner out of the freezer, admired Jake's latest plant for a spell, and then went upstairs into John's bedroom. After dinner, while the kids were doing their homework, the four of them talked. It was mostly John and Jade doing the talking. If you were an observer, you could really see the Jake-ness in the two of them.

Then, she gave one last look at the replica Stiller shades and left. Every couple of weeks, John would just send her a text. Something like:

JOHN: hey jade, everything okay?  
JADE: yeah!!! just doing my thing!  
JADE: no need to worry! you do your thing, okay? :D  
JOHN: haha, yeah.  
JOHN: take care! let us know if you need anything.  
JADE: mhm! will do!!

And that was that. So John tried not to worry. Instead, he threw himself into his craft with everything he possibly could, making sure that his son and his other son (or, as he referred to them as, "the boys") always had some kind of baked confectionary to come home to, just the way Dad did. He didn't even try to pretend he was doing anything but blatantly mirroring his father's memory, in the best way he knew how to. It brought him a small measure of peace, with every little droplet helping, brought him closer to some ephemeral state called "fatherhood" that could only be glanced in fits and spurts. He gave tobacco a try and then decided that it wasn't for him, even if the memory was nostalgic, a smoky wisp of childhood since left behind.

No, baking was, at least for now, his passion. He'd wake up at five just to get started, like he did today, rolling off the side of the bed closer to the door. Sometimes, Roxy slept in the same bed as him. Sometimes, Jake did. Sometimes, they used the guest room, or the couch, because, realistically, sleep was a function of wherever was the closest and whose snoring you felt most like tolerating that night. Roxy's was surprisingly low pitched, like a sort of rumbling growl, and Jake's was high, reedy, and even cartoonish at times, while John's was loud and toneless, the sheer flapping of throat from inhalation of air. This morning, it was Roxy, who slept curled up in her separate blanket. White, with pink cats. John's was the classic ghost sheet. Carrying it around him like a cape, he tied it off at the neck while he wandered into the bathroom, brushed his teeth, and then went down to the kitchen.

There he was, Jake, sleeping on the couch all peacefully, with a veritable marathon of movies playing on the television. The smell of rising yeast was John's alarm clock now. He liked to start the day with fresh toast for the boys, and he was slowly getting better at more and more kinds of bread. Recently, Rose had sent her a recipe for challah, so that was his latest pet project - the perfect braided loaf. John thought about Rose, and Kanaya, and both Vriskas, while his hands idly worked at risen and proofed dough a little bit later. With the war cooling down, they had more opportunities to talk, although usually text-based communication through a resistance program was the norm (same with Jade, actually), rather than phone calls. They'd go something like:

JOHN: morning, rose!  
ROSE: Good morning, John. Up and at it early, as usual?  
JOHN: yep! still tweaking that recipe you sent me.  
ROSE: And how's that working out for you? I can assure you that when it comes to ethnic bread-derivatives, my mother's recipe is simply the best there is.  
JOHN: well, i know its a family recipe and all...  
JOHN: but raisins?  
ROSE: John, don't be ridiculous. Raisins are delicious.  
JOHN: you have no idea how much i hate that you just used "raisin" and "delicious" in the same sentence.  
ROSE: I'm sorry, would you rather another taste-related adjective be applicable, even if only in the most tangential terms? Would you rather I describe the raisins as "delectable"? "Luxurious"? Perhaps you could consider them "sensual", if you were to give me the ability to stretch our enigmatic adjectival pallet that far.  
JOHN: rose why are you like this.  
ROSE: Oh, whatever do you mean, Mr. Egbert?

John sighed, as the stand mixer did all the hard kneading work for him. Flour was scattered across his apron and his pants, despite his best efforts, considering his habit of just wiping his hands on the damn thing. John debated whether or not to just ignore Rose's statement and continue with the conversation in a different way, when he heard the typical 7 AM rummaging that indicated the awakening of the boys. The running of the shower, while he bantered a little further with Rose.

JOHN: anyway, im gonna have to drive tav and harry to school soon.  
ROSE: Leaving so soon? I could've sworn you were in for your weekly dosage of slovenly psychoanalysis from your favorite ectosibling-in-law.  
JOHN: as much as im sure youd love to hook me up to your weird freud-grave-turning-generator thing, i really do gotta go soon!  
JOHN: have to make sure they're not late and all that!   
ROSE: No worries, John. You know how much I enjoy our talks, even the relatively moderate ones. Take care.  
JOHN: you too!

By the time the bread was out of the oven, golden brown, warm, with a fluffy yellow interior delightedly free of raisins, Tavros and Harry Anderson were dressed, downstairs, and ready for challah. The rest of it was for Jake, and then the rest of that was for Roxy when she woke up (usually at noon, after a long night of troubleshooting and security testing through the safety of her laptop). Butter in one of those glass cases so you didn't have to wait for it to melt in the morning. It was certainly a different bread experience than the normal wonderbread stuff (which John had also learned how to make, and was far better at it than the supermarkets). John made enough food that he tended to give away the excess to the locals. Wasn't like he needed the money.

He gave Harry Anderson a tight hug, and Tavros a tousle and a hug of his own.

JOHN: whos ready for another day of learning!  
HARRY ANDERSON: haha dad you are SO lame.  
TAVROS: Um,,, i am, uncle john,  
TAVROS: Is,,, that okay?  
JOHN: of course it is!  
JOHN: and for the record, harry anderson, when it comes to being a lame dad...

John tried not to throw open the front door, while Tavros ate as quietly as humanly possible. Something inside him felt exuberant. Alive. Revitalized and refreshed.

He opened the door calmly, like a normal person.

JOHN: i am simply the best there is!


	2. Chapter 2

ROXY: hey

The placid air of the house was filled with the scent of cupcakes. Confectionaries weren't John's favorite, but he felt some kind of unspoken duty to uphold the Crocker-Egbert line's association with baked goods, considering... Anyway. With the two o'clock spring sun beating down on Salamander Village, the house was filled with a gentle, warm breeze, mixing with the ceiling fan to form a perfectly temperate conglomeration of air currents, swirling around John, as was only appropriate.

JOHN: hey.

The couch. The archetypical meeting point and circulatory system of any good household. Roxy's sock-covered feet trotted down the stairs, her laptop carefully managed in one hand. It curled over the very top of the screen, letting the laptop's bottom sit on her upper arm, cradled into her elbow. Her footfalls were almost silent, especially once they stopped hitting hardwood and started hitting carpet on her way to the couch, flopping down into it. She took a moment to get settled into place, leaning her head on John's shoulder. Their sides fit together just as much as the laptop fit into Roxy's arm.

John would be a pants-on-fire-liar if he said he still wasn't hopelessly in love with Roxy.

Roxy would be a pants-on-fire-liar if she said she still wasn't hopelessly in love with John.

She doesn’t want to go back to where she’d been with him, but knowing they’d both been there, together, feels like enough.

Like she had said all those months ago, they had a million billion lifetimes ahead of them. They didn't even know all the ways they had left to fuck up in.

JOHN: how'd you sleep?   
ROXY: like a gd baby lmao   
JOHN: that good, huh?

For some reason, Roxy has a sudden thought to correct John's grammar. She stares at her computer screen, and the moment fades.

ROXY: yeah   
ROXY: beds comfy as shit   
ROXY: usually better than the couch lmao   
JOHN: amen to that.

The air is silent, but there's no tension or awkwardness. All of that dissolved away a while ago, turning into a fine dust that blew away in the breeze. No, the silence on the couch, outside of the salamander puppet show playing at a low volume for John's eyes to consume, is a matter of comfort and respect. There's no need to fill the air today. It's just a Friday, nothing special about it. This is a silence of two people who so thoroughly understand each other that there's not a need for words until there is.

Roxy puts on some music at a low volume, her mix to code to. It's a playlist John is intimately familiar with, judging by the pavlovian response it gives him to almost immediately relax into the cushions just a micrometer further. The two sounds in the room do the speaking, a humorous vaudeville act and an optimistic chiptune thrum improbably synced together to form some kind of melismatic concerto of unspoken things. Today's show on the television was a special occasion, unlike the actual day itself, the retelling of the story of Casey. Obviously, it was filtered through the somewhat simplistic lens of the consorts, and a couple of generations of spawnings, but their set dressing of the Land of Wind and Shade was surprisingly accurate despite few pictures of it existing, and none of the original salamanders from there being alive.

Casey was good, always. John remembered how, in his depressive funk all those years ago, how she'd come in with a skeleton or two or one of her friends or children and give him some food from the village, enough to keep him moving forward. An act of mercy that, at the time, John didn't feel he deserved. On occasion, a very rare occasion, he woke up and looked at the ceiling, still feeling like he had deserved none of this. None of this happiness was genuine or real, that it had to be given to him by some kind of outside force, because his body and his brain and his very existence wasn't conducive to happiness, or happy endings.

On occasions like these, like right now, when John ruminated too deeply (she could tell because he was staring at his hands in the way that only he did), Roxy turned her head to the side and kissed him on the cheek. Too early in the morning for lipstick, but it was still soft and pliant, even if it didn't leave a permanent mark.

ROXY: psst john   
ROXY: i love you

John smiled and turned his hands back over into his lap while Roxy turned the bulk of her attention to her computer. How could she reasonably call herself one of the best programmers on all of Earth C without doing that one thing that all legendary programmers are said to do - create a new, more efficient compression algorithm? In her case, it was video game compression, because of course it was. She was working on it at a pretty theoretical level right now, thankful that, at the very least, Jane Crocker's stranglehold on even the very internet put all the digital distribution platforms into a single corporate-controlled entity. It made the code base easier to work with. Codebase, her inner dialogue meant. 

JOHN: i love you too.

John leaned his head on top of hers. Or kind of into? The years hadn't done much to separate their similarity in height, even as John grew into what could categorically be described as a "bulky dude", "bear", or "DILF", depending on your I'm-Attracted-To-John-Egbert meter. To be able to say something as frank and sincere as a simple "I love you" despite everything that transpired felt like a momentous occasion every time it happened, which was approximately once a day, give or take a tenth of a day. And lest you forget that he exists, John and Roxy both loved Jake, too, each one in a different way, but nevertheless in a way that was equally as valid and validating.

What they had wasn't romantic or sexual or familial or friendly. Like a certain troll's prophecies, it had transcended such notions as "easy categorization" entirely, existing in a state of ephemeral satisfaction that filled all who experienced it with innocuous vigor.

Even if Jake wasn't in this scene (he was out in the back, tending to his garden), he was loved just as much. And even if _you_ aren't in this scene, because you're reading it, know that you're loved too. 

John always admired Roxy's hands, how nimble and deft they were with the keyboard, like she was playing an instrument. During their marriage, it didn't feel like he really got to know her all that well, like there was some big yawning chasm between them, between them as ideals and them as people, like how they barely played video games even though they were the sole owners of one of the last remaining Nintendo 64s in reality, and had been for all of those years. Slowly, the chasm was being gapped, one plank of wood at a time, and this was how: John watching Roxy do her thing.

Her fingers flew, nails clipped to an appropriate keyboard-friendly length but still painted in elegant, shiny black, punching out lines of code before stopping for thought. Occasionally, a rapidly typed out backspace like the rattling of an alarm clock going off, one of the old kinds that used the hammer on the two bells,  _taktaktaktaktaktaktaktak_. Lines of code artfully arranged across the screen, tabs pulling them forward and backward like the sinuous motions of an ocean wave. John thought about what his life could be like if he lived a more normal one, barring the confines of the game entirely. Would he have gotten any better at programming? Would he even be anywhere close to the apparent echelons that his parental partner was ascended to? Somehow, he felt that the answer was both "yes" and "no" at the same time, and he was okay with that.

Her moves were astounding, in the way that one was astounded by a particularly skilled dancer or magician or musician. When she needed to wipe large chunks of text, shift+up arrow to highlight and her ring finger slapped the backspace, all in the blink of an eye, wiping the canvas clean for new code to repopulate it. He had long since stopped trying to understand what exactly she was coding, because he didn't need to know the ins and outs, but sometimes she liked to explain it to him anyway, like a rubber ducky on a desk that one spoke to in order to trace error after error. Today, though, she seemed on her game, the machine gun of her fingertips only ceasing for small pauses, like a swimmer coming up for air.

By the time the special on the origins of Casey had ended, John's cupcakes were finished, announcing their arrival with a loud chime from the kitchen. Roxy smiled at John as he got up, and he smiled down back at her, and then sat back down to kiss the top of her head, before getting back up, realizing that he could've just leaned over and didn't need to sit back into the couch. They both seemed to come to this realization at roughly the same time, drawing a tiny chuckle from the two of them.

JOHN: want a cup cake?   
JOHN: once i've frosted them and everything, i mean

Roxy rolled her eyes dramatically, unable to stop herself from grinning, especially at how he enunciated "cupcake".

ROXY: duh!   
ROXY: save some frosting for me nerd :3

 


	3. Chapter 3

hi harry anderson! 

im just leaving you this letter in your lunch so that you know just how proud we are of you! 

mom and i love you very much and so does uncle jake. 

don't tell mom but i gave you an extra cookie! :B 

i hope you have a great day at school!

  


HARRY ANDERSON: god dad you're so cheesy

| 

hi tavros! 

im leaving this letter for you just so you know how much me and jake and aunt roxy love you! we are all so proud of you! 

i put an extra cookie in your lunchbox, too, right under the apple! you've earned it!

i hope you have a great day at school!

  
  


TAVROS: ,,,thanks uncle john :')  
  
---|---  
  
John found himself staring at some plants in a way that would've been pensive if he wasn't enjoying the scents - up until the point that he was suddenly interrupted by a thump on the back from the cheeriest person in all of the Salamander Village that would've made him jump out of his skin if he wasn't, on some level, aware of it. John's wind powers hadn't exactly intensified, but age certainly hadn't dimmed them, giving him a general, all-around awareness of people in his vicinity, the breeze an extension of his nerves. He could turn it off when he needed to, but, in general: John Egbert was one of the hardest men to sneak up on in all of Earth C.

It also meant that he knew  _exactly_ when Vriska Lalonde-Maryam was sneaking over at three in the morning, back from the war front for one reason (Harry Anderson) or another (Tavros). He would obligingly turn the breeze off, at that point. What his kids do at three AM is none of his business.

JAKE: Hey there johnny boy! Admiring the roses?   
JOHN: huh? isn't rose - oh, the flowers!   
JOHN: yeah, you've really outdone yourself this time!

Jake grabs one of the roses - a pinkish one - at a specific spot that John's sure is correct, but he doesn't know how Jake knows. A pair of scissors comes to a quick snip and he trims off the thorns, passing it to John before turning back to face the bush. A little... Spark? A glow? It's something like a white bubble, ephemeral, hard to look at directly in the same way that the sun is, emerges from Jake's fingers and into the cut rosebush. Jake murmurs something that John is pretty sure is encouragement to the plants, and then turns around, enjoying John's slightly befuddled expression.

JAKE: Why thank you! Ive been working my left cheek off this batch!   
JAKE: You and rox have been a pair of real humdingers of helpers!   
JOHN: huh? what did i do?

Jake smiles knowingly at John. Even though it's been a couple of months, John's still unused to seeing Jake smiling so much, so brightly, in a way that fills up every space he's in when he grins with his perfect teeth. It's not something they've sat down and talked about, but there was no doubt that Jake felt things were better now than they were before. John could feel it in the air, and not in a Breathy way.

JAKE: Well youve been doing a bang up job keeping the blue skies sitting pretty!   
JAKE: And me and roxy finished our little automagic-hydratory-doohickey a couple of weeks ago so thats been taking all the fuzzywork out of the water jerking!   
JOHN: i was... i'm doing that?   
JAKE: Nary a raincloud in sight, johnny boy!   
JAKE: Theyve only been here when were out skipping the moons at bedtime.   
JOHN: you lost me a little there, heh.   
JAKE: It only rains when youre asleep, john!

John stopped, staring at the pink flower, letting a cool blue breeze curl around it, bring the scent to his nose. It was faint but pleasant.

He turned his head up to gaze. The sky is empty. Winds whistled past his ears, skimming the tips of leaves and thorns, like grazing the strings of a piano with your fingertips. It was almost as if he could hear the planet's Breath whistling in his ears, twirled about by the baton of an invisible conductor as they sharpen their instrument, preparing to fire. It is a familiar sound, not quite a note, not quite a voice. It is the sound Desolation makes when it tires of inflicting its lack, after twenty-five years of playing. It stands up, takes a bow, and leaves the stage, allowing the next orchestra in line to take their places.

In all of the months since fixing the old place up, moving in together, the five of them... It hadn't rained once. At least, not while John was awake. No, wait, there was one time - when he and Roxy had gotten into a minor argument, and it became overcast for John while he sulked on the roof. But since then, everything was lovely.

And the skies were clear.

JOHN: huh.   
JOHN: i guess you're right!   
JOHN: have you been keeping track?   
JAKE: Oh but of course!   
JAKE: When the weather boys fell right off track every day i started peeping around for better predictions.   
JAKE: It didnt take a lot of math to puzzle out that the clouds around these parts are mixed up with your bedtime!

It's then that John remembers that Jake and Jade are related. He smiles a little and brings the rose up to his nostrils, taking in its scent.

JOHN: i'll keep that in mind next time i go to bed.   
JOHN: say, do you want a cupcake?   
JAKE: Oh, do i?   
JOHN: do you?

Jake laughs. It's a pure laugh, almost innocent, and it makes John happy just to hear it coming out of someone who's been in such a bad place for so long. It was pure in the way that glacier water was (at least, according to the water bottles).

JAKE: John, a cupcake would be the bees knees right about now!


	4. Chapter 4

JOHN: oh, hi jade!  
JOHN: saved you a cupcake.

The sun continued her limitless procession across the sky in twirling, striating streaks, tracing trails into the blue sky above as it dimmed to orange, and from there, to twilit pinks and purple. In the house, the raucous tones of Mario Kart 64 accompanied John's son, his adoptive son for whom the exact biological relation is significantly harder to puzzle out, and Roxy, all of whom were having the grandest of times. John was just having a good time knowing that they were having a good time. That was satisfaction enough for him.

Jade always arrived. It was never as if she left anywhere, but more that she had somewhere else to be, a strange sense of mobility keeping her from standing in one place for too long, whether that was through possible ADHD or just on a more emotional basis. She was never leaving, only arriving at a new series of locations, and today, it was the Egbert-Lalonde-English household, fluttering down from the clouds with a procession of water vapor hanging behind her. A sweater, both large and red, and what John imagined to be yoga pants, or something similar, mostly hidden by the hem of aforementioned turtleneck hanging over Jade's knees. Her hair floated behind her in stark defiance of gravity's wishes, and her pajama slipper'd feet made contact with John's roof -- a semi-regular occurrence. The roof was often the gathering point of gods, as it were.

JADE: thanks! :D

Jade steadied her feet and slowly stepped around herself before sitting down on the edge of the roof, letting her legs dangle off. She kicked them, back and forth, while he passed her a treat and she carefully unwrapped it from its container, meticulously searching a way to pull every last scrap of baked-on batter from the edges of the paper. By now, the icing had congealed and hardened around the edges, in that way that cupcake icing tended to do when you left it alone for a while. It didn't take long for John to join her on the edge of the rooftop, although he sat with his belly to the sky and his back to the ground, ignoring the precarious edge that so taunted him, a fear of heights never quite conquered, ironically enough. In the air, it was fine, but on ground, against other objects, the precipice of ledges produced some potent portents of possible panic.

JOHN: how you holding up?  
JADE: oh, you know!  
JADE: same old!  
JADE: im alive and all that.

Jade always had a weariness to her even before Dave's death, a general disinterest in continuing the war except for the sake of others. What exactly she was doing with her free time, John didn't know. She just appeared and disappeared like a virtual particle winking in and out of existence.

She chewed her food with the sort of thoughtfulness and studiousness typically reserved for scientists observing viruses through microscopes or passing hadrons through giant tunnels to slam them into other hadrons and observe the results. It wasn't exactly a slow chewing, but her eyes drifted shut behind the frames of her glasses until she had finished. With a spark of green light, the wrapper had disappeared into a tiny little ball no bigger than a speck of dust, and then, further down, until it wasn't even perceptible to anyone besides Jade. She took careful aim, and seemed to throw it into the trash can sitting by the driveway. John could only really guess, after all.

JOHN: yeah, but how are you, like... holding up?

Jade looked over to John, and he stared back at the sky. The sound of his blunt nails running against unshaven stubble was far louder than it had any right to be.

JADE: im living, john!!  
JADE: im alive.  
JADE: doing my own thing for once :)  
JADE: teaching myself how to be by myself again!

Jade leaned back, and kicked her feet a couple more times.

JOHN: are you sure you don't want to stay here with us?  
JADE: ...

Jade laughs a couple of times. A couple of quick, individual chuckles, each one separated by a little breath. Her teeth jut out, just a little bit. Fixing them was never really something she was interested in.

JADE: john, you know i love you guys!!  
JADE: and the boys...  
JADE: i just need some....  
JADE: me time!  
JADE: you know?

John shrugs. He kind of gets it, but the time when he got it was a long time ago.

JOHN: are you depressed, jade?  
JADE: maybe!!

She doesn't sound resigned or defeated. It's just kind of a factual statement. Is Jade depressed? Maybe! It would be perfectly reasonable, John imagined, for Jade to be depressed right now.

JADE: maybe i am.  
JADE: but i am getting better.  
JADE: its taking its sweet time! and i dont know if ill ever really be over it!  
JADE: but its getting better.  
JOHN: well, i'm glad to hear that, at least!

They sit in silence. Silence, it seems, dominates much of John Egbert's life, but it's not an uncomfortable silence. Just the silence of two people who know a thing or two about loss and loneliness. It passes by like the gentle rolling of thin, wispy clouds overhead, not a droplet of rain in sight. Neither one of them talks much.

JADE: karkat's closing in on jane...  
JOHN: is he, now?  
JADE: yeah.

Even the little snippet of digression to the slowly-ending war does little to revitalize the silence into life. After half an hour of minimal chatter, Jade gets up and cracks her back, followed by cracking every other joint in her body, one by one in a loud procession. She looks over at John, gives a little wave, and begins to propel herself into the air, only to be stopped by a hand on her wrist gently tugging her back down onto the rooftop. John looks at her without a pleading expression, or a sad one. Hidden behind moonlight coated glasses, his visage is almost inscrutable, until he smiles and its revealed to be one of happiness.

JOHN: even if you don't want to stay forever...  
JOHN: do you at least want to stay the night?  
JOHN: we'll clear out the guest bedroom and make you dinner and stuff.

John's smile turned into a flash of a grin.

JOHN: you can even beat jake at mario kart!

Jade's face remained neutral, until it wasn't, slowly curving into a frown, and then, unable to resist breaking out into peals of smiley laughter.

JADE: john, if thats a can of possibility rather than a can of permission then ill have to correct your wording!  
JADE: i will beat jake at mario kart!!!  



	5. Chapter 5

HARRY ANDERSON: so it's just x equals negative b, plus or minus the root of b squared, minus 4 times a and c, all over 2a  
JOHN: mmhmm! i definitely understand all of the words that you just said.

There's a shared bit of laughter across the coffee table, John's legs furled up neatly beneath him like a rolled up carpet, Harry Anderson sitting in much the same way. The initial tension, the worry, that his own son would reject him, had since melted away weeks ago. As it turns out, when you're depressed, everything else sort of falls by the wayside, including building good relationships with your son. And that's not to say that John decided that he was fixed, because there's always that lingering doubt at the back of his head, that one day all of this could collapse and it would no longer be so peachy keen, and some days he woke up and his body was stiff and decided not to move or even want to breeze his way down, but when things were... Okay, then they were okay.

So, now John was going to school. Except not really, because he didn't really want to, and it would be weird for him to show up in a class full of middle schoolers, but the second best thing was getting Harry Anderson and Tavros to explain their work, and he'd learn along with them. John had never finished his primary education, and unlike Roxy and Jake, he was not really a genius in any sense of the word. John was average before the game. He didn't even get those three extra years that Jane had over him.

It all stopped in middle school, so this quadratic formula shit was over his head.

Tavros was out for the night with one of his friends, this Carapacian boy John had met once or twice and got only good vibes out of. Tavros always finished his homework early, always the people-pleaser, parents included, but most of the time his evenings were staying inside, or, rarely, sitting out in the garden. Harry Anderson, on the other hand, was the kind of "play video games first, do homework later" kid that John used to be, back when homework was something he cared about, which led to evenings like this.

It wasn't as if Roxy or Jake weren't smart enough to teach him, but that wouldn't do anything for his kiddo's studying habits. The best way to learn was to teach, as someone important and smart probably said at some point. At the very least, it sounded smart. So, passing back and forth a notesheet full of formulas and numbers and _who in god's name decided to put letters in math_ seemed to be a decent idea for everyone involved.

JOHN: what did you get for number ten?  
HARRY ANDERSON: uhh... 4 and -10, i think  
JOHN: roxy? can you come here for a sec?

Roxy's voice is both distant and amused, coming from all the way upstairs.

ROXY: nope! puzzle it out urselves lmao  


From John, a gritted teeth grumble.

JOHN: -4 and 10.  


A chuckle is shared from father to son. John closes his eyes for a moment, remembering a time so long ago when he was sitting on the other side of the coffee table, doing math with his businessman dad, someone with a little more numbers in his brain than god-of-weather John Egbert. Businesspeople stuff was nothing but numbers, all day long, and gardening was kind of numbers, and programming was definitely numbers, but stay-at-home-dad was a little less numbers than that. Or maybe a lot less numbers.

Pounding out which numbers were the _correct_ numbers took a little back and forth, but eventually Harry Anderson won out, and John hastily scribbled over his own incorrect math, where somewhere a negative sign got missed, and suddenly they were in agreement.

HARRY ANDERSON: hey, dad?  
JOHN: yeah?  
HARRY ANDERSON: its not weird to not want to go to prom, right?

John thought about it. Media of his world always expressed prom as some kind of holy thing, the most momentous occasion in a teenager's life, and yet, when all the dances in school came around, John wanted nothing to do with them, either. If he couldn't really dance with Rose or Jade or Dave, if they were scattered across the world like dandelion seeds, then what was the point? It wasn't like there was anyone at school that he had _liked_. He paid them so little attention that he couldn't even remember any of their names or faces. After the first week on the ship, even his teachers had begun to slip away. Nowdays? Nothing. A big blank.

JOHN: no, i dont think thats weird. can i ask why, though?  


Harry Anderson looks down at his homework, and then a little past that. He doesn't seem to want to say why, embarrassed by the answer, for whatever reason. John has a feeling, though, that there's more understanding than his son could assume.

HARRY ANDERSON: i mean, why would i want to go if vriska wont be there?  
HARRY ANDERSON: its not like i really want to go with anyone else  
JOHN: mmm.

John and Harry Anderson worked in mostly silence for the next 15 minutes, only numbers and formulas and letters in math god damnit. And when they were done, they called down Roxy, and she checked their work and gave them the go ahead. With all that behind them, John gave Harry Anderson a kiss on the cheek and went upstairs, leaving the boy alone with the Nintendo 64 to do as he pleased. Roxy sat on the bed, leaned against a throne of pillows, her keyboard clacking like the wheels of a train with her flying motions, while John pulled out his phone, dialing a number, letting it ring. He was slightly, but only slightly, surprised when the other end picked up.

ROSE: And to what do I owe the honor of your call, Mr. Egbert?  
JOHN: hi rose!

They shared a private little laugh, one of many, a lifetime of the things.

ROSE: Hi, John. What seems to be the matter? It's not every day that I receive a _phone call_ , good heavens.  
JOHN: well, how in contact are you with vriska right now?  
ROSE: If I may ask, would you mind specifying the exact Vriska you had in mind?   
JOHN: your daughter, goofball!  
ROSE: That's what I assumed, but you know what they do say about assumptions and somesuch.  
JOHN: do i?  
ROSE: Come now, John.  
ROSE: Even you can't resist the amusing allure of the phrase "An ass out of you and mumptions,".

The incoming chuckles were loud, bold, and familiar.

ROSE: But yes, we are in regular contact still. Why do you ask?  
JOHN: well, this is going to sound crazy...  
ROSE: Crazy and I are well acquainted, continue.  
JOHN: but how do you feel about school proms?  


**Author's Note:**

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